Graduates moving to London for their first job after university face spending upwards of 46% of their take home pay on rental payments. Historically, desirable locations are likely to hold a rent burden that may make living costs insurmountable. Young professionals now need to weigh up a variety of factors, including commuting length, travel costs, and above all rent.

The average rent in UK has risen by 0.13%, the highest monthly increase since April 2016. The increase pushes the average rent paid for a property in the UK up to £1,209 per month, dropping to £767 if London is excluded. Rental growth on an annual basis also showed signs of a sustained recovery, with rents across the UK increasing to 0.97%, the highest level seen since May 2017.

From 1st October, the rules are changing for HMOs and when they must qualify for a mandatory licence. As ever, it means that intermediaries will have to be on the ball to tease out the difference between the time of HMO establishment and the time of licence, something that we can definitely help you with.

Rental growth across the UK is stuttering. However, there are signs of a recovering market in London and stronger demand for rental properties. On the face of it, landlords have had a tough time in the past two years from increased regulatory pressure to a significant increase in stamp duty costs, yet they have managed to shoulder many of these costs without passing them onto tenants.

While there remains a huge degree of regional variation, the overall trend has been a slowing of rents across the UK in the first half of this year. However, much of this has been London weighing down heavily on otherwise resilient growth across the UK. Now that London rents have bounced back to growth this could all be about to change.

While landlords have been faced with a number of challenges over the past two years, some might have expected this pressure to push up rents, though low interest rates and the Bank of England’s Term Funding Scheme (TFS) have kept the cost of borrowing down and allowed landlords to shoulder some of the costs.

July 7th 2017 marks the third anniversary of lending at Landbay. We interviewed Landbay CEO and Co-Founder, John Goodall, about the biggest challenges, breakthroughs and his proudest moments, since the launch of the business.

Whether you’re looking to breathe new life into your own home, make it more attractive to tenants or add more value to sell and move up the property ladder, there are a number of ways in which you can improve your home to maximise its price tag.

To successfully profit from the purchase of a rental property, you need to understand exactly what tenants want, so we asked some of our landlords 'what do they think tenants look for in a rental property’ below are some of the responses we received:

In the current long term low interest rate environment, new investors are being attracted by headline interest rates, however it’s important to dig deeper to fully understand the detail underneath the headline rates.

In 2014 Landbay launched with the idea of anchoring peer‐to‐peer lending to a consistently performing, robust asset class – residential property. Our platform brings our investors and borrowers closer together so that everyone can prosper from the British property market.